As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq.

The articles, written by U.S. military “information operations” troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. . The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents, and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.

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From Yahoo! News:

ALEXANDRIA/TANTA, Egypt (Reuters) - Egyptian police restricted voting in areas contested by the opposition Muslim Brotherhood on Saturday and detained more than 800 Islamists trying to build on early success in parliamentary elections.

Thousands of riot police deployed in constituencies where the Muslim Brotherhood has a candidate, in many cases sealing off polling stations or severely limiting the number of people who could go in and vote, witnesses said.

"Security forces surrounded some of the polling stations, blocking some voters from entering," said judge Ahmed Mekki, who is in charge of an election monitoring effort by the judiciary.

Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Abdel Muezz Mohamed said 56 judges had refused to take part in the count because of flagrant violations during the day's voting. Altogether more than 11,000 judiciary personnel are supervising the process.

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From CNN:

Former CIA director Stansfield Turner has labeled Dick Cheney a "vice president for torture."

In an interview with Britain's ITV news Thursday, Turner said the U.S. vice president was damaging America's reputation by overseeing torture policies of possible terrorist suspects, the UK's Press Association reported.

Referring to Cheney, Turner said: "I just don't understand how a man in that position can take such a stance."

In Washington, Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, is leading a campaign to ban cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody.

The administration says the legislation could tie the president's hands, and Cheney has pressed lawmakers to exempt the CIA, according to The Associated Press.

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From the BBC:

The UN has formally rejected a US invitation to visit the Guantanamo prison camp, saying it cannot accept the restrictions imposed by Washington.

UN human rights experts said the US had refused to grant them the right to speak to detainees in private.

This was needed to make a "credible, objective and fair assessment of the situation of the detainees", they said.

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From Al Jazeera:

senior member of the US Democratic Party has called for an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, rejecting White House attacks on critics of the war.

The call from Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a leading Democrat voice on military issues, coincides with the release of a new poll on Thursday showing US President George Bush's job approval rating touching a new low of 34%.

"The US cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home," said Murtha, the senior Democrat on the House of Representatives subcommittee that oversees defence spending.

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From the New York Times:

In what is expected to be the first of a series of criminal charges against officials and contractors overseeing the rebuilding of Iraq, an American has been charged with paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks to American occupation authorities and their spouses to obtain construction contracts, according to a complaint unsealed late yesterday.

The man, Philip H. Bloom, who controlled three companies that did work in Iraq in the multibillion-dollar reconstruction effort, was charged with conspiracy, wire fraud, conspiracy to launder money and interstate transportation of stolen property, all in connection with obtaining up to $3.5 million in reportedly fraudulent contracts.

The complaint, unsealed in the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia, also cites two unnamed co-conspirators who worked in the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American administration that governed Iraq when the contracts were awarded in early 2004. These were the officials who, with their spouses, allegedly received the payments.

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From a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial:

The president used the occasion of Veterans Day on Friday to lash out at critics of the Iraq war. In doing so, he displayed once again a propensity to play the patriot card to deflect attention from possible administration missteps rather than providing answers that could satisfy critics.

"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began," he said in Tobyhanna, Pa. He added, "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will."

The problem: There is mounting evidence that there are legitimate questions about how the nation was led to war. This is not about rewriting history but about getting history right.

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From the Washington Post:

In February 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency questioned the reliability of a captured top al Qaeda operative whose allegations became the basis of Bush administration claims that terrorists had been trained in the use of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, according to declassified material released by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.).

Referring to the first interrogation report on al Qaeda senior military trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the DIA took note that the Libyan terrorist could not name any Iraqis involved, any chemical or biological material used or where the training occurred. As a result, "it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers," a DIA report concluded.

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From the Guardian:

Tony Blair repeatedly passed up opportunities to put a brake on the rush to war in Iraq, a failure that may have contributed to the country's present anarchy, according to Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain's ambassador to Washington at the time, in his book DC Confidential, serialised in the Guardian from today.

Sir Christopher, highly critical of Mr Blair's performance in the run-up to the war, argues the prime minister and his team were "seduced" by the proximity and glamour of US power and reluctant to negotiate conditions with George Bush for Britain's support for the war.

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In a column on Sunday, O. Ricardo Pimentel, editorial page editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, wrote that, “Yes, regrettably on the matter of WMD, count us as among the many who were duped. We should have been more skeptical. For that lack of skepticism and the failure to include the proper caveats to the WMD claim, we apologize, though I would note that, ultimately, we didn't believe that the president's central WMD argument warranted war. Not then and especially not now.”

The column appeared on the same day Tim Rutten, media writer for the Los Angeles Times, urged major newspapers to own up to their role in easily accepting the WMD argument from the Bush administration. He noted that his own newspaper was among this large group.

"The American people need to know how that progression occurred because that knowledge is key to the responsible exercise of citizenship in the upcoming midterm elections and beyond," Rutten wrote. "The New York Times clearly wasn't the only journalistic institution that failed, and the duty to set the public record straight about how this mistake was made is a shared one. There will be shame enough for all if the media as a whole fail to accept this obligation."

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It's a start.
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